Towards Human Rights in Residential Care for Older Persons: International Perspectives

People are leading significantly longer lives than previous generations did and the proportion of older people in the population is growing. Average global life expectancy has grown by twenty years since 1950 and is expected to grow a further ten years by 2050. Residential care for older people will become increasingly necessary as our society ages and, we will require more of it. At this moment in time, the rights of older people are in the process of receiving attention at international and regional levels. The United Nations, the Organization of American States and the African Union are all starting to explore the possibility of establishing new international and regional conventions for the rights of older persons.

This book explores the rights of older people and their quality of care once they are living in a care home, and considers how a human rights framework can be used to ensure adequate care of allolder people in care homes. The book takes a comparative approach to present and future challenges facing the care home sector for older people. An international panel of experts have contributed chapters identifying how their particular society cares for its older and oldest people, the extent to which demographic and economic change has placed their system under pressure and the role that residential elder care homes play in their culture. The book also explores the extent to which, applicable European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), constitutional or other rights, form a foundation to the regulatory and legislative structures to residential elder care.

The book provides comparative analysis of steps that the UK jurisdiction, among others, could take in order to place human rights norms or other principles and safeguards within the policy foundations of care homes in both the public and private sector and, in the practice of care giving.